Past exhibitions

The exhibition entitled ‘Confluence’ will display work by Wayne Guest, Simon Lloyd, Vicki Mason, Nick Mount, Beatrice Schlabowsky and Prue Venables and their adventures across materials.

Contemporary craft practice often demonstrates skilled focus on a singular medium. Lifetime building of knowledge and understanding of one material encompasses history, technique, nuances, spirit, assumptions, and comprehension alongside general understandings of sculptural elements such as line, form, space and time. The drawing in of a second or third material to the work opens new doors of possibility. Sometimes it merely extends the limits of the original substance. For example, objects in porcelain and glass hampered by the risks and impossibilities of kiln firing and annealing can now be extended out into space through the addition of other materials such as metal and wood. Thread and textile additions to hard edged metal add a tactile softness, colour and texture otherwise impossible to achieve. The firing of glass enamels onto the surface of metal extends possibilities of colour and invention.

Such developments also bring learning challenges where former adept experience and knowledge is confronted by new techniques and materials. Through new modes of working, play and experimentation, a world of the unfamiliar and the unaccustomed is entered. 

Image: work in glass, metal and wood by Nick Mount.